Vivica A. Fox

Vivica Anjanetta Fox is an American actress and producer whose career has moved across daytime television, prime-time comedy, studio action films, independent features, reality television, and a large body of television movies. Born in South Bend, Indiana, on 30 July 1964, she was raised in Indiana and later studied at Golden West College in California. Before she became a film star, Fox built screen experience through music and television appearances, including work connected to Soul Train and roles on the soaps Days of Our Lives and Generations.

Fox first became widely visible on prime-time television in the early 1990s. She appeared opposite Patti LaBelle in the NBC sitcom Out All Night and then moved quickly into film roles that made her one of the recognizable faces of 1990s popular cinema. Her breakthrough year was 1996, when she appeared in two very different hits: Independence Day, playing Jasmine Dubrow, and Set It Off, playing Francesca “Frankie” Sutton as part of an ensemble led by women in a crime drama about economic pressure, friendship, and desperation. Those films established her ability to work both in large-scale commercial spectacle and in character-driven urban drama.

After that breakthrough, Fox remained busy in film and television. She appeared in Booty Call, Soul Food, Why Do Fools Fall in Love, Idle Hands, Teaching Mrs. Tingle, Kingdom Come, Two Can Play That Game, and Juwanna Mann, often bringing a mixture of glamour, comic confidence, and sharp timing. In Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill films, she played Vernita Green, one of the former Deadly Viper assassins, in a memorable domestic fight sequence that became one of her most frequently cited roles.